How Does Social Media Affect Our Privacy

As we all know, social media has a tremendous impact on society and has affected in some way our daily life, relationships, and/or business. Every day, people around the world access famous social media network sites such as facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and so on to find out about other people, others might use social networking to reconnect with old friends, make new friends, or even meet their spouse. The excessive use of social media websites might bring negative effects; while for other people, it might bring satisfaction or positive effects. Technological advancements such as the internet, have given us the opportunity to connect with other people anytime and anywhere in the world. Pretty much all around the world, everyone has access to the World Wide Web via a desktop computer or smart phones. The fact is that no matter our current location or destination we might go, social media will always be following us as long as we have that direct connection. The main focus of this paper is to identify the good and bad of social media, and the current and future problems it will bring.

In this article, Malcolm Gladwell argues that in a network were loose ties are prevalent and Hierarchy is just a word, social media could never give what social change will ask for. He starts off by recalling the 1960’s Civil Rights Movement, were groups of dedicated individuals challenged the status quo, with crucially, strategic activism that led to a true revolution. Mr. Gladwell illustrates that there are a few distinctions that show between traditional activism and social media. One being that social media is not a hierarchy, instead it is a network. Secondly, his more compelling argument that social media is built on “Weak –ties” which rarely will lead to the high-risk activism that is needed.

While many people put off and ignore the issue of social media and its downfalls, others say that people should think about how our lives are being affected by this advancement in technology, including, lack of human contact and precious time being lost due to consumption with social media. Social media is currently a highly controversial topic in which numerous people have mixed feelings. Society has typically viewed new advancements in technology as beneficial and a sign of success within their country. But, has it solely caused successful outcomes, or are there downfalls to these advancements?

Privacy is dead. We post our personal lives online without actually knowing the consequences. Viewing other people’s lifestyles online and how they can make it look very adventurous, makes one seem like they haven 't accomplished anything in life. This type of feeling makes it very tempting to put our personal lives online because everyone simply does it. The social sites that are used more often, due to a study that was done by Statista, are Facebook, Youtube, and Twitter. Surprisingly, Instagram is a bit further down the list. This place called social media is an information grabber. “Social media is the collective of online communications channels dedicated to community-based input, interaction, content-sharing and collaboration,”(Whats), according to Whats.com. Once our information is on these sites, it becomes public information. Anyone that has access to the world wide web can easily become a reporter to your lifestyle. Having your information online can be a risk or a good thing, many people out there can use ones information to harm someone or to look after them. For example, athletes and other people are monitored in order to to see if they are maintaining the right image. In addition, there has also been many cases where people have commented crimes based on information found online. Some crimes have also found its way to social media, making it a great source for law enforcement to fine evidence. Privacy can also be lost online through any website that contains

56% of Americans have a social media profile, in this statistic, more than half of Americans use this popular tool on the internet, but is the tool effecting us in a good way or a bad way? Social media, a tool used to communicate to your friends, family and others in a useful way, a thing that’s risen dramatically in the last decade, social media is a very useful tool to see what your friends or family are doing , but social media is also a very dangerous place if not careful enough, cruel people like cyberbullies or even identity thieves lurk around on social media websites.

It is a fact that social media has existed for several decades. However, as technologies keep advancing, the usages of social media have gained attention because of the issues they may cause. On one hand, social media is fundamentally used to interact among users via the Internet; consequently, they may share and exchange pieces of information and ideas in virtual communities and networks. In summary, social media is basically used to connect people. On the other hand, recent studies have found that rather than making the users feel connected, they can promote loneliness and less social interaction, which may lead to isolation. The scope of this analysis is limited to five sources with the following four themes: loneliness, face-to-face communication, textual technological communication values, and negative emotions.

“Social media is changing the way we communicate and the way we are perceived, both positively and negatively. Every time you post a photo, or update your status, you are contributing to your own digital footprint and personal brand.” Although people should feel safe while using the internet, they are still capable of coming across countless and unnecessary situations. Social media can be used for a variety of things, but there are still very many pros and cons of social media.

One of the most prominent areas of information technology present in today’s society is that of social media. Facebook users make up 62% of the entire adult population and Twitter users compose 20% of the population (Mobile Messaging and Social Media, 2015). Sites like these allow users to transfer information, in the form of social content, to the Internet community with no limitations. These sites also ease communication across great distances, allowing for a diverse audience for any information posted on such a site. Such a tool for information transfer is incredibly powerful in the hands of those who know how to use it.

Some of our biggest role models in America revolve around our sports leaders. People who have put in many hours of training hard and overcoming seemingly unsurpassable obstacles. People like Lebron James, Usain Bolt, Peyton Manning, etc. Maybe we want to feel the fame, own the money, or meet other amazing people, but we all want to feel the accomplishment in some way or another. Team activities seem to be a major concept our civilization immerses itself in. We are willing to pay hundreds of dollars year after year to go out and cheer on our role-models and follow players’ social media accounts like it is theology we are reading. In ways it is consuming our thinking however, today teams teach many valuable life skills that children lack.

It’s more than likely that the first thing you reach for in the morning is your phone and the last thing you put down before you go to bed. As technology advances our brains are adjusting to the new technology. The way we absorb information is changing, our memories are being impacted and the way we read is changing. Well what is social media? Social media is a bunch of Internet sites that enable people from all over the world to interact with photos, messages, audio and videos. “The very first social media site was created in 1997; it wasn’t until the early 2000s when it took off”. It is estimated that one third of the world’s population uses a form of social media. Studies said that social media has changed the way our brain functions. If our brains are being affected by social media/internet then social media should come with warning so people’s health wouldn’t be affected.

Social media is evolving throughout the world and is having more and more of an impact on how human’s live day to day. Technology is keep getting more evolved and specific. While technology is keep evolving so is social media platforms. Social media platforms are being used all around the world and most people do not shy away from using it. Also, these platforms are showing up in work places as well as schools. According to the article, The questionable promise of social media for education: connective learning and the commercial imperative, “Facebook and other social media have been hailed as delivering the promise of new, socially engaged educational experiences for students in undergraduate, self-directed, and other educational

Traditionally, people used the Internet to simply expend content: they read it, they watched it, and they used it to buy products and services. Increasingly, however, people are now utilizing platforms–—such as content sharing sites, blogs, social networking, and wikis–—to create, modify, share, and discuss Internet content. This represents the social media phenomenon, which can now significantly impact how an entire movement is viewed worldwide. It’s difficult to comprehend in this day and age that social media could actually produce something positive and worthwhile, considering so much of the discussions are filled with arguments revolving around race relations, political ideologies, and violence. The social media phenomenon has people “plugged in” to twitter wars between celebrities, the latest political sound bites, and hashtags to use against one another (i.e #BlackLivesMatter vs. #PoliceLivesMatter). Yet, through the issues, there are social media platforms that promote positive expressiveness of one’s self worth and love. In relation to the body, the hashtag #EffYourBeautyStandards has created its own phenomenon within the realm of the internet. In times of body shaming, scrutiny, and being judged based off of a size on the back of a tag, or the color of your skin, or the lack of makeup one refuses to where, this hashtag promotes beauty acceptances and embraces the differences of every person.

The term ‘social media’ has become a broad-term to describe a large number of online systems that serve as a platform for the generation, and distribution of user-generated content. Social media creates a virtual social space, where a large number of users come together and interact with one another. These interactions can be either structured, such as responses that are moderated on blogs, semi-structured, such as a discussion between an extended network on Facebook, or unstructured, such as the anarchial functioning of Twitter.

When you look at today’s society, you will see a world full of a quickly booming wonder: technology. With technology there is the option to be involved in what a lot of people know as social media. With the invention of web-sites such as Facebook, which is only about ten years old (Westwood), people all over the globe can connect with one another. This technology is exploding into more and more possibilities for the avid networking junkie. You can now send instant messages to all of your friends and family. Want to start a new small business or a band, perhaps? Advertise it on the popular favorites such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook or Myspace. This new era is causing quite the stir. Social media is a good way to be creative and have more opportunities to sprout businesses and learn multi-tasking; this, in turn, has changed the human psyche in astounding ways, with human beings becoming addicted to social media, all the while their brains are being re-wired for the generation of technology.

In the contemporary society, social media have become essential in people’s daily life. They provide entertainments, news, and educational information to the public at any time. Therefore, the claim that only teenagers obsess with social media is no longer valid. In fact, the trend is transforming as social networks are highly promoted in recent years. The population of adults who fully engage in the social networking has increased tremendously. In the article “Virtual Popularity Isn’t Cool- It’s Pathetic”, Ian Daly presents the statistic that there are sixty-four million Facebook users are over the ages of twenty-five and one hundred and ten million MySpace users are over thirty-five (par.1). For the people who born in the 1980s or earlier, they are already working for years to pay their bills and develop their careers. Therefore, these demographics on social network are shocking. Young adults are stills acting like kids to shirk their responsibilities. Due to the fact, the shallows values from the social network are negatively affect people’s behaviors and gradually lead to an unhealthy and immature society.